Profile of Ellie Simmonds

Paralympian Ellie Simmonds has astounded the crowd time and time again with her grit and determination to be the best in her field of competitive swimming.

17 year old Ellie who was born in Walsall trains for 9 sessions a week, two hours at a time in Swansea where she now lives part time.

Ellie suffers from achondroplasia (dwarfism) doesn’t let her 4ft 1” height and shortened limbs deter her from her dream. Ellie demonstrates that with strength and dedication she can leave her longer limbed rivals behind, so far winning an impressive gold in the 400m freestyle (in which she knocked 5 seconds off of world record time), gold in the 200m individual medley and a bronze medal in the 50m.

“Winning bronze was a massive surprise” Ellie says. “This is my 4th best event so to come out with a bronze medal overtakes my personal best which is what I was aiming for. My coach is going to be really chuffed”.

For a modest Ellie however, this is far from her first big win. She was Britain’s youngest competitor at Beijing 4 years ago winning 2 gold medals in the 100m and 400m freestyle events.

In 2008 Ellie won the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award as is strongly touted to be this year’s BBC Sports Personality winner.

In 2009 Ellie was the youngest person ever at 14 to receive an MBE.

“It’s great if people out there in the world watching the Paralympics get inspired”, Ellie says. We can’t speak for anyone else but here at The Happy Starfish we are inspired and will be following this phenomenal young lady’s career with interest.